Stuck in Tucson waiting for eye surgery, I watched Inside Job on my laptop last night. The last part focuses on the economists whose "scholarship" and consulting promoted the economic ideas and policies that contributed considerably to the Great Recession. The arrogance and bald faced lying of these luminaries was remarkable. Glenn Hubbard, Martin Feldstein, Frederic Mishkin, Summers, and so many others--all disgusting pigs, getting rich by pimping for finance. They all deserve a firing squad.
When I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of the professors was Marina von Neumann Whitman, daughter of John von Neumann. She was by most accounts just another of Pitt's mediocre professors. But we were surprised when she quit to become a VP of General Motors and the company's chief economist. Why would anyone want to do a thing like that? Maybe she was just ahead of her times. At least she had the integrity to leave her academic post.